HeHe..Corporate greed existed long before "Reaganomics." Probably back to the first corporation that ever was.

We all have our pet theories, but (I think) one of the major problems with technical companies/corporations is the disturbing trend for the CEO to no longer be an engineer, but an MBA or other business major.
It seems like the beginning of most technical companies were engineers/scientist/inventors who loved their ideas and products, with a passion, and wanted to create a company to produce and distribute these. And if they made money in the process, which they hoped to, this was great.
It seems now days the CEO's main goal is to please the shareholds (and make mney for themself with bonuses) and if they manage to make a saleable product, that's OK. As long as its good enought to last through the warranty period.
Long lost is the love of research and betterment of mankind through product develop that Edison and George Westinghouse, et. al., had. Profit was desireable, but a secondary result of producing their prouducts.
It seems, starting in the late fifties early sixties, profit became the main goal and product secondary.
In the case of Neutron Jack Welch, he was a chemical engineer, forced into engineering by his dad. He didn't like it and was not good at it. Even in his biography, he tells (in a rare moment of self depreciation) of how he caused a major explosion at one of the polymer generating facilities when he was engineer at GE Plastics. He should have been fired. GE would be a different company today.
However, GE liked Welsh because he was ambitious and with his ego, he did not take "no" for an answer, they saw a managerial future for him. (If you read his bio and also read the book about GE called "Profit at Any Cost" you will be able to get a picture of the man who destroyed GE.)
Anyone who even remotely disagreed with him was verbally, and beligerantly, badgered into submission. He is described as losing his temper at the mere hint of disagreement. He would get red in the face, pound his fist on the table and verbally badger someone until he started stuttering so badly, he could barely talk.
He had a stuttering problem when he was a kid and was often teased by other kids, when he was in school, not only because of the stuttering, but because he was physically short as well. So he learned to "protect" himself by verbal abuse of others and carried this habit into the professional world. It is how he got his way with the GE board of directors. Almost everyone who was interviewed, who worked under him, hated him and few ever dared to speak up as they would be verbally abused and embarrased in front of everyone. He would then find a resourceful way to demoted, transfer or relieve that person of their duties. You did not cross "neutron" Jack and survive.
He built his ego by buying and selling companies and being a major player in the corporate world. Sold off first was HVAC, small household appliances next and then consumer electronics. His major goal, according to him, was to get GE out of manufacturing and make it into a service company. It was he who built GE Financial from almost nothing. That is why he had the Board agree to change the name of the company from, General Electric Company to GE as he did not want the company to be associated with electrical prooducts.
The one thing he didn't get by with, was changing the GE logo from the late 1800's cursive GE in a circle symbol to block letters GE (like you see on the GE Building in Corporate Headquaraters in New York. Remember the year (late 1980's) he had the block letter put on GE appliances in place of the worldwide famous logo?
There was such an outroar, from the public, that it was just about the only time Welch ever back down on anything. His ego was so strong he wanted the company to have a new logo, created by him, instead of their historic one.
It was also about this time he had the words "general electric" slowly being phased off most products. All you saw was the GE logo, usually in a corner. He said he was trying to educate the public that GE was not an electrical manufacturing company.
His goal was to transform a company, doing what it had been doing for nearly one hundred years, and phase in new finacial, insurance and service arms while phasing out many (but ot all) the electrical manufacturing arms.